Traditional Medicine

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT TRADITIONAL MEDICINE - PAGE 2

The benefits of alternative treatments and practices have stimulated the interest of some mainstream doctors. Medical procedures accepted by cultures around the world have intrigued Dr. Dean Funk since the Burbank family practitioner was stationed in Taiwan with the Navy during the early 1970s. Acupressure, using the hands to apply pressure to different spots on the body, helps tune into the source of a patient's pain and make a more accurate diagnosis, Funk said. "If the therapy works, and the patient feels better, you can't knock it," he said.

A mother, who prosecutors say should return to Illinois with her sick baby and get the child medical attention there, hasn't decided whether she will comply with their wishes, according to her mother. Jolene Goens and her husband David, a South Pekin, Ill., minister, have been ordered by a judge in Illinois to get medical attention for their 10-month-old daughter or go to jail. Court records in Illinois indicate the daughter weighs 11 pounds and cannot sit up. The state also contends David Goens, a pastor at Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, is opposed to traditional medicine.

On this day, the medicine Buddha at the Beijing temple was in. But he lacked an interpreter, a monk well-versed in the subject who could enlighten the doctors visiting from the United States. And so the six researchers from the Park Ridge Center, which studies health, faith and ethics, had to make do with impressions. Judging by the physical renovation occurring at that temple and others, one of those impressions was that the monks had more practical things than interpreting on their minds these days, now that the Communist government has encouraged some religious activity.

By Katherine Riegel. Katherine Riegel is an essayist and poet who writes about health-related issues | February 21, 1999

Afterwards, You're a Genius: Faith, Medicine, and the Metaphysics of Healing By Chip Brown Riverhead Books, 398 pages, $24.95 In "Afterwards, You're a Genius," Chip Brown finds himself vacillating between spiritual and scientific frontiers as he explores the divide between alternative therapies and traditional medicine in the past and the present. Oddly, he became entangled in the debate not from a personal need for relief from pain that traditional medicine couldn't provide, as most do, but from something else, something more mysterious, perhaps having to do with a hope that human existence is more than cells and systems.

Saying they had glimpsed the next century of medicine, officials at Grant Hospital-the Lincoln Park facility whose beginnings date to the last century-announced Tuesday that they would open a division devoted to alternative treatments. The foray into such holistic treatments as acupuncture, biofeedback and massage therapy was driven, the officials said, by the hospital's need to be more competitive amid the changing world of health care, especially with reform lurking ahead. It also was a response to what chief executive officer Arnold Kimmel described as the particular needs of Lincoln Park's young residents, many of whom he said were open to, if not seeking, alternatives to traditional medicine.

Pat Malone, owner of Massage Therapy Associates Ltd. in Naperville, believes the key to successful health care lies in the personal touch. "I get a lot of referrals from the regular medical community, and when I speak before them at conventions, I'll remind them that massage therapy is really much older than they are," Malone said. "When I give talks to the public, I often quote from the book `Megatrends,' which said our society is moving away from high tech to high touch. I tell them I took the author of the book literally."

Q. Does Mayo Clinic prescribe non-traditional medicine such as massage or acupuncture for postsurgical pain and relief? --Texas A. Mayo Clinic is using these and other non-traditional approaches. Some call them alternative methods, though I prefer the term "complementary" because they work so well in conjunction with, rather than in replacement of, the excellent medical options already in standard use. During the last several years, our cardiac surgery division has developed a healing-enhancement program aimed at minimizing postsurgical pain.

Albert Laughter kneels near the fire pit in the center of the tepee, arranging his ceremonial arrowheads, bowls and pipes. He lays out the all-important eagle feathers, reverently unwrapping them from an American flag. The fifth-generation Navajo medicine man has trained most of his life to treat the people of his tribe with the traditional healing methods of Native Americans from this region of the country: powwows, sacred dances, sweat lodges, purification ceremonies, natural herbs.

Despite the heat, the three dogs bounded out of her car and into the clinic, tails wagging and tongues ready to lick. "They love this place," Barbara Perez said Wednesday, as Jasper, Kayla and Samantha jumped around in a treatment room at Dragon's Life Systems in Andersonville, waiting for a session with their animal massage therapist. "Jasper was a very angry little boy," Perez explained. "Mrs. Yang took lots of time with him, calming him down." Enter Xing Chun Yang, an acupressure specialist.